Visual Arts

Yvonne McGuinness - Amharc Fhine Gall 11th Edition

Draíocht in collaboration with Fingal County Council Arts Office

Wed 22 Nov
- Sat 3 Feb 2018
Ground Floor Gallery

‘Holding ground where the wood lands’

Draíocht, in collaboration with Fingal County Council Arts Office, is delighted to announce a new commission from visual artist Yvonne McGuinness for the 11th edition of Amharc Fhine Gall. McGuinness’ practice encompasses performance, video, photography, sewing, writing, sculpture and context-specific installations. She has an interest in embodied experience of place and in re-imagining the everyday by devising projects that create dynamic moments of connection to place and community. Her work is immersive, collaborative and is often a catalyst to generate other narratives for its participants.

For this commission, McGuinness will work with a culturally diverse group of local young people from D15's Foroige, exploring themes of identity, place and their connection to it. This collaboration during the autumn months will result in a site-specific performance and film installation to be shown in Draíocht’s Ground Floor Gallery - itself a two-way mirror between ‘the art world’ and ‘the real world’

Amharc Fhine Gall (Fingal Gaze) is an annual exhibition funded by Fingal County Council’s Arts Office, in collaboration with Draíocht. The exhibition was initiated in 2004 to provide a platform for visual artists from or living in Fingal. Yvonne McGuinness grew up in Portmarnock, Co Fingal.

www.yvonnemcguinness.com

Draiocht's Galleries are open Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm. Admission is Free.

Lost State - Hugh McCabe and Suzanne Walsh

Thu 19 Oct
- Sat 4 Nov 2017
First Floor Gallery

Lost State, a mixed-media installation by Hugh McCabe and Suzanne Walsh, comprises of photography, voice, 3D animation and audio. The work centres around photographs of disused computer parts shot from the imagined point of view of future entities uncovering the technological detritus of our time. A soundtrack accompanying the photographs alludes to a speculative narrative about the circumstances of the discovery of these objects and their significance for those finding them. A short film using digital 3D modelling and rendering techniques simulates drone footage of the exploration of one of the discovered objects.

The photographs are all shot on a large format 4”x5” analogue film camera in order to make a connection with early photographic history and its use as a form of documentation and enquiry. The work aims to trouble the boundaries between various categories: the organic and the inorganic; the imagined future and the perceived past; the human and the technological; the analogue and the digital; the secular and the sacred.

Hugh McCabe is a Dublin-based lecturer, musician and artist. He is graduate of the MA ‘Art In the Contemporary World’ course at NCAD and teaches critical theory and 3D graphics at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown. Suzanne Walsh is an artist, writer and musician whose cross-disciplinary work moves between the literary, music and art worlds. Suzanne has an editorial practice, including the magazine Critical Bastards, and is currently a resident artist at Fire Station Artists’ Studios.
The artists wish to acknowledge Vincent O'Reilly for 3D modeling.

Draiocht's Galleries are open Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm. Admission is Free.

The Weight Of Water - Elaine Hoey

Thu 19 Oct
- Sat 4 Nov 2017
Ground Floor Gallery

The Weight of Water is an extraordinary immersive animation that fuses virtual reality and gaming technology to address the ongoing global refugee crisis. For each viewer – one-at-a-time and for 8 minutes - that crisis is no longer an abstraction, an item on the news or a front-page photo. Instead it becomes a lived experience, collapsing the distance that normally protects us from the impact of such events and making us ‘witnesses’ rather than safely detached spectators. Wearing a virtual-reality headset, each viewer joins refugees on a boat and is both observer and fellow-traveler as they undertake a treacherous journey. Words, sound and images create a sensory field that enacts the perils of seeking asylum in Europe, offering us increased understanding of these traumatic and grim experiences.

Elaine Hoey creates interactive installations, appropriating gaming aesthetics and techniques, such as virtual reality, motion capture, 3d virtual avatars and environments. Her work explores the intersections between the media, technology and politics.

Hoey is an award-winning artist who recently completed a Masters in Fine Art at NCAD. In 2016 she was awarded the prestigious RDS Taylor Art Award for her virtual reality installation The Weight of Water which, following The Visual Arts Awards Exhibition at the RDS was exhibited at Futures at the RHA; Design and Violence, a collaboration between the Science Gallery, Dublin and MoMA, New York. Hoey has recently exhibited new virtual reality works Stranger Than Fiction Is Fact at NCAD and Blueprint for a Virtual Nomad at Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda.

SYNERGY

An exhibition of work representing Draíocht’s project history with young people in Dublin 15

Wed 6 Sep
- Sat 7 Oct 2017
First Floor Gallery

First coined by the philosopher Aristotle, ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, aptly defines the concept of Synergy; when working together accomplishes more than could have been apart. Each of the selected works in this exhibition and the projects from which they come are unique. Each its very own creative experience. There is diversity in content, medium and materials, with a range of artistic facilitators and creative practice, with distinctive themes, ideas, successes and occasionally disappointments. Project participants are drawn from Dublin 15 schools, families and youth groups. Alone, each project creatively and imaginatively engages our young people from babies to teenage years. As a whole, they represent a generation of young people across Dublin 15, their interests, thoughts, opinions and stories. They represent Draíocht’s core values: our on-going commitment to young people and the creation of opportunities to engage in high quality arts experiences.

Most significantly these projects allow younger members of our community to become cultural producers themselves: part of an artistic process that puts them at the very centre of Draíocht’s programming and projects. In their uniqueness there remains a similar process from conception to reality for each project. Each intends to challenge, to inspire, to be fun, to bring a sense of pride, learning and opportunity. They each begin with a sense of excitement and curiosity. When an artist and their young participants meet, they are unknown to each other and yet they will create something very special, not only making, creating and imagining art, they will also create relationships and understanding about themselves, their work and the world around them. This is SYNERGY; each of the parts fostered, supported and brought together by Draíocht, to create something greater, something special; to create magic.

Draiocht's Galleries are open Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm. Admission is Free.

Curated by Sarah Beirne, Children & Youth Arts Officer, Draíocht

Claiming Space - Red Bird Youth Collective

Wed 6 Sep
- Sat 7 Oct 2017
Ground Floor Gallery

Draíocht is delighted to present Claiming Space by Red Bird Youth Collective, a youth-led visual art group based in Galway Arts Centre. Working collaboratively with professional artists and architects, Red Bird make innovative projects, programmes youth events for their peers and contributes to youth policies and strategies in Galway Arts Centre. Claiming Space showcases Red Bird’s collaborative methodology, both with each other and with professional artists and architects and features work made since 2009. Over the years Red Bird has worked with artists such as Louise Manifold, Ruby Wallis and Dominic Thorpe and with architects Bláithín Quinn and Dominic Stevens. Although created by different Red Bird members and different professionals, all the artworks in this exhibition are rooted in exploring and challenging the world from a young person’s point of view, whilst claiming artistic and public space for young people.

The curated selection also represents different media and different ways to communicate ideas. The overall aims of Red Bird - to make work to a high standard, to engage their peers in the production of art and to participate in policy making for young people - are also visible in the exhibition. Red Bird aims to present youth arts alongside professional Irish arts practice, not to ghettoise it. A special publication with images of all Red Bird projects to date and commissioned essays accompanies this exhibition.

This exhibition is presented in tandem with SYNERGY in our First Floor Gallery, Curated by Sarah Beirne, Children & Youth Arts Officer, Draiocht.

Draiocht's Galleries are open Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm. Admission is Free.

Claiming Space received a touring grant from the Arts Council in 2016 and was exhibited at Galway Arts Centre, The Dock, Carrig-on-Shannon and Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge.

Curated by Maeve Mulrennan, Galway Arts Centre.

Meta Perceptual Helmets - Cleary Connolly and Neil McKenzie

Fri 7
- Sat 8 Jul 2017
First Floor Gallery

If we have two eyes, then why is our vision so limited? Why do we have so little depth perception? Why don’t our two eyes offer us two different views of the world? Why don’t they allow us to look behind and in front at the same time, or sideways in both directions? Cleary Connolly’s meta-perceptual helmets ingeniously invite us to set aside our preconceptions and to experience things in ways quite different from the norm. Wearing the helmets, you become a hybrid creature yourself, part human, part machine, part animal, but also: part work of art. A work of art that challenges those who contemplate the helmet - from the inside or from the outside - to take a new perspective on the world.

Artists Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly have spent several years developing an extraordinary series of helmets, art that can help us to explore these and other mysteries of visual perception. The collection has been hand-crafted in aluminium by master coach-builder Neil McKenzie and will be on view in Draíocht for two days only.

Curated by Sharon Murphy, Draíocht Curator-in-Residence 2017

Draiocht@Night

Fri 7 Jul 2017
7PM-10PM

FRIDAY 07 JULY 2017
7PM-10PM 18+

Draíocht@Night presents a Summer Evening’s Extravaganza where Aoife Dunne brings the world of her exhibition 'Limitless' to life for one unforgettable party of visual art, contemporary dance, music, spectacle and fashion! We are delighted to announce Meta Perceptual Helmets by Cleary Connolly and Neil McKenzie and Visual Artists Kate O'Loughlin, Ciaran Gallen, Sadbh O'Brien, Evan Bech and Martina Menegon, who will present their works in the First Floor Gallery.

School Portraits

John Ahearn, Mandy O’Neill, Blaise Smith, Kilian Waters

Wed 24 May
- Sat 24 Jun 2017
Ground & First Floor Galleries

School Portraits takes the viewer into the world of school to see contemporary artists’ representations of young people, school buildings and the wide range of activities and experiences that go on during a school day. The exhibition presents work by artist John Ahearn, photographer Mandy O’Neill and painter Blaise Smith who have immersed themselves, often for extended periods of time, to create bodies of work that capture the rich and varied moods and lived experiences of Irish school life. The exhibition will also include new work produced in a collaborative project between filmmaker Kilian Waters, Draíocht Curator-in-Residence, Sharon Murphy and Room 13 Inquiry, Dublin 15.

From classroom to playground, from close-up to group studies, from painting-from-life to filmed testimonials, this exhibition offers an extended portrait of school and an insight into the thoughts and feelings of young people who go there every day.

Room 13 International is a network of student-run arts studios in schools and community settings worldwide. Room 13 Scoil Bhríde National School and Room 13 Tyrrelstown Educate Together National School both located in Dublin 15 are the first two Room 13 studios to open in the Republic of Ireland. Room 13 Inquiry in Fingal is an initiative of Fingal County Council Arts Office. You can read more here and here.

John Ahearn’s St Francis Street Boy’s 1994 is on loan from the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) through its National Programme.
Works from Blaise Smith’s SchoolWork are on loan from Presentation College, Carlow.

A History of Play - Eamon O’Kane

Fri 7 Apr
- Sat 13 May 2017
Ground & First Floor Galleries

Artist Eamon O’Kane transformed the Ground Floor Gallery space into an interactive playful installation inspired by the educational play objects devised by educator and inventor of Kindergarten, Friedrich Fröbel. The installation comprises a number of elements including drawings, paintings and educational play materials known as Fröbel Gifts – colourful spheres, cylinders and tubes. These ‘gifts’ are used for unlocking creativity at an early age by teaching children about three-dimensional shapes and colours and their relationship to the environment and nature. The installation continues in the First Floor Gallery with projected animations and a response/play area.

A History of Play is on loan from The Model, home of The Niland Collection, Sligo.

30 Years Artists Places

Celebrating 30 years of local authority provision for the arts

Thu 12 Jan
- Sat 25 Mar 2017
Ground & First Floor Galleries

One of the most significant exhibitions of Irish artists in recent years, 30 Years, Artists, Places marks 30 years since Local Authorities embarked on providing for the arts locally, featuring 30 artists and 30 places.

The Beautiful Beasts

An exhibition from The Ark

Thu 1 Dec
- Tue 3 Jan 2017
Ground Floor Gallery

Visit a weird and wonderful collection of animal sculptures curated by The Ark especially for children. Amongst these quirky, loveable animals, you will find a flying horse, a tortoise with a secret story and a toucan in disguise! Created by leading Irish and international artists from materials ranging from bronze, woods, ceramics and steel, you can learn about the techniques used to create the artworks and feel samples of the materials used. Featured Artists: Owen Crawford, Conor Fallon, Luxon Gutsa, Orla Kaminska, Olivia Musgrave, Anthony Scott, Imogen Stuart.

Robert Kelly

Expanding Spaces

Sat 24 Sep
- Sat 19 Nov 2016
Ground Floor Gallery

Expanding Spaces is an exploration of liminal spaces as explored through the medium of drawing and printmaking, where the boundaries between both disciplines can sometimes seem blurred. Preoccupations with themes such as a space between, bending space and expanding spaces emerge through a process led and playful approach to the media used.Robert is a graduate of Dun Laoghaire School of Art and Design, the National College of Art and Design and Trinity College, Dublin. His work is held in public collections by Louth County Council, County Monaghan VEC and in corporate and private collections in Ireland and Internationally.

Jason Deans

Any Observer

“What I really look for in my work is how the use of raw, natural materials can resonate, respond and retort to human interactions on the contemporary world.”

Jason’s ‘Any Observer’ work is predominantly sculptural and stands testament to significant social political commentary within the ephemeral constructs created. Lately, his pieces have expanded in scale and challenge, working with raw natural materials such as wood, sand, water and earth in ways that speak to our experiences as humans. This use of ephemeral materials in his practice is important, as the instability and wonder it creates within the work is key to the viewers experience within the space. Often the audience is imbibed with the view of them as a strategic player in the piece, a creative interplay between art and audience, the artist working always towards a contextual expression that feels cohesive and complete.

Ruth McDonnell

GLIMPSE

Sat 27 Feb
- Sat 7 May 2016
Ground Floor Gallery

These drawings and paintings capture glimpses of cinema interiors and fleeting images of the facades of Irish picture houses. GLIMPSE is infused by Ruth McDonnell’s own passion for cinema and by the years she has spent working in film and television. Ruth Mc Donnell studied at NCAD Dublin; Medway College of Design, Kent; Dún Laoghaire IADT; and DIT Dublin, where she was awarded a Degree in Fine Art. This is Ruth’s seventh solo exhibition.

Amharc Fhine Gall X - Transhistorial Terrain

Marking the 10th edition of Amharc Fhine Gall, Fingal Arts Office is delighted to present the work of Ella DeBurca, Ruth Clinton & Niamh Moriarty with its annual exhibition opportunity Amharc Fhine Gall X, curated by Linda Shevlin.We are caught in a temporal flux, oscillating between future and past while often disregarding the here and now. For if the New, as a cultural and material trope, is bound to the future, and history is anchored to the past, how and when are we left to consider our present?The specifically commissioned new works in this exhibition were created by revisiting historical material and overlapping major and minor narratives across multiple times and places, exposing larger historical and social narratives.

Martina O’Brien

Continuum

Fri 9 Oct
- Sat 21 Nov 2015
Ground Floor Gallery

People have tried to predict ecosystems for millennia. Paranormal means were often used, including prophecy, water divining, astrology and many other forms of divination. Realised through video, drawings and installation, Continuum explores the roles of climate scientists, environmentalists and futurists - the seers of contemporary society – who have predicted diverse ecosystems.

MORE ... Listen to Dr Matthew Jebb, Director The National Botanic Gardens, launch Martina's show

Artist Talk - Marc Guinan in conversation with Maeve Connolly

Sat 3 Oct 2015
1-2PM
Ground Floor Gallery
// FREE

Draíocht invites you to join us for a closing discussion, with artist Marc Guinan and Maeve Connolly (Co-Director MA in Art and Research Collaboration, IADT Dun Laoghaire). Using his current exhibition in Draíocht entitled ‘What is Painting ...?’ as a springboard for discussion, Guinan and Connolly will explore the artist’s own practice including questioning the traditional and conventional ways of thinking about painting and its presentation within gallery spaces. Guinan will also touch on his experience of working with a publicly-funded Gallery, and the transition from being a recent graduate to professional artist.

Andrew Carson

Pilgrim

Fri 18 Sep
- Sat 24 Oct 2015
First Floor Gallery

Pilgrim is an installation of new work by Andrew Carson developed as part of his time as Artist-In-Residence at Draíocht. Following on from his research into the use and effects of digital devices and social media as the modern ubiquitous means of contact, Andrew’s work is an exploration of social structures, systems, and methods of interaction.

Marc Guinan

"What is painting ...?"

Fri 24 Jul
- Sat 3 Oct 2015
Ground Floor Gallery

This exhibition will present outcomes from Guinan’s current investigation into materiality. The painted forms are created using pva and various other types of paint, like gloss, metal paint, emulsions, industrial grade paints and oil paint. Layers of paint are let dry over time and peeled from various surfaces like acetate and glass.

Helen Mac Mahon

Profero

Fri 8 May
- Sat 11 Jul 2015
First Floor Gallery

The work in Profero is the result of a fascination with the phenomena of light, movement, perception and space. They are the result of observation and they function to reveal the artificial ecosystem that exists between the viewer and these intangible elements.

MORE ... Read a review by artist Des KennyMORE ... Helen's exhibition featured in documentary video